Apparently women of a certain age, namely those 29 and holding, often begin to experience memory loss. I forget where I read that.
I started noticing this last summer. Or maybe it was the year before. Anyway, I started noticing that I would suddenly forget what I was doing when I walked into a room, or while driving, or
The main target of my forgetfulness seems to be my cell phone. I’ve forgotten it at a client’s home, on a shelf in Homesense, on a shelf in the grocery store, and in the refrigerator. I think it was fixing itself a snack.
It really had me worried. Not that my cell phone was eating too much, but that I had a real memory problem. I diagnosed myself with early onset dementia and decided to keep track of these forgot-what-the-hell-I’m-doing episodes in a notebook. I did enter a few things into the book but I have no idea where it is now. It’s probably in my fridge.
It turns out that I’m not alone. All my female friends my age seem to be experiencing the same thing. One friend, I forget who now, told me that it’s a known medical fact that our memories get worse after menopause. Huh.
The other night I decided to do some research on the topic. I pulled out my laptop and discovered that one of my Facebook friends is on vacation in Florida, and that Oprah made a moving speech at the Golden Globes. Then I remembered I was going to do some research on memory changes after menopause.
Next thing I knew, I was taking a quiz to see what flavour of potato chip I am, all the while feeling like I was forgetting something.
Memory changes after menopause. That was it.
What I discovered is that the problem seems to be stress and worry, causing us to forget things and that it’s more difficult to encode new information when we’re under a lot of pressure. That was a huge relief.
My take-away from all this research is that I should learn to relax more, worry less, go to Florida, and give a moving speech at the Golden Globes.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’m a ketchup flavoured chip.